Many celebrities -- from director Spike Lee to "View" co-host Sherri Shepherd and rapper Chuck D -- have used social media to speak out against the killing of Trayvon Martin, a Florida teenager whose death has become a national news story.
Basketball star LeBron James recently tweeted a picture of the Miami Heat wearing hoodies, with their heads bowed in support of Martin.
Meanwhile, Reverend Al Sharpton recently spoke at a rally for Martin in the teen's hometown. At the protest, Sharpton, joined by Martin's parents, adressed the upset crowd. "Trayvon could have been any one of our sons," he said. "Trayvon could have been any one of us."
Sharpton said the following in a Huffington Post editorial:
The race/ethnicity of Zimmerman or any citizen in this type of scenario doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, it is the race of the victim -- Trayvon -- that does matter. It is his race and his demographic that is consistently depicted as the threat, and negatively portrayed in popular culture.
On Friday, President Barack Obama also weighed in on Martin's death, calling the incident a tragedy, urging for cooperation among law enforcement and declaring that "some soul searching" was needed throughout the country.
"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said, underscoring how the issue affected him on a personal level. "I think [Trayvon's parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."
To see more celebrity reactions to the death of Trayvon Martin, click through the gallery below.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Martin's death as "murder" in the headline. At the time of this writing, no murder charge has been filed.
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The Huffington Post | By Crystal Bell Posted: 03/23/2012 4:28 pm Updated: 03/24/2012 5:11 pm